Interviews

Dennis Takes on Imus, Duke Case

This is a partial transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," April 11, 2007, that has been edited for clarity.

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly.

In the "Miller Time" segment tonight, our intrepid correspondent has been dishing on his syndicated radio program about the Imus situation and the Duke case. And Mr. Miller joins us now from Los Angeles.

DENNIS MILLER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Top of the evening, Bill.

O'REILLY: Do you know Imus? Have you ever met him? Gone on his program?

MILLER: I was on the show years ago. I remember walking into the studio somewhere right outside of Manhattan, maybe Queens, Brooklyn. I went in, and he was wearing a gun, which was odd. I remember thinking — I said to him, "What's that about?"

And he says, "I wear a gun." He had a holster.

I said, "Wow. I don't know what that's for. I don't think the interview's going to be that rambunctious." But in retrospect I can see now that he needed the gun to eventually shoot himself in his own foot with.

O'REILLY: Now when you heard what he said, now you got to think back. First time you heard it, first time, what went through your mind?

MILLER: I thought, wow, that's wrong. That's rude. He's going to catch a lot of — he's going to catch a lot of heat for that. I had no idea that it would hit the WFAN like it has. But I remember thinking there's really a Rolendo like tight rope there that he's doing.

And for whatever reason, and it might be that — you know to me he looked a little tired, a little asleep at the switch. Imus to me looks like a werewolf who only had enough energy to get halfway through the transformation.

O'REILLY: A werewolf that only had — didn't have enough — didn't have enough energy to really become a full wolf?

MILLER: It looks like he said I'll put this off till the next full moon. I'm just going to sit here like this.

O'REILLY: He's 66 years old. I don't think people understand that. I mean, you know, if you're 66 years old and you're sitting there in a cowboy hat and have a gun and, you know, you're insulting a black basketball team, I don't know, I might — you might want to look at just the big picture. You know what I'm talking about, Dennis?

MILLER: Well, I'd say he got a big wake-up call here, Bill.

O'REILLY: You bet.

MILLER: And you noticed that it seems like he's taking it seriously now because the cowboy hat's off. He sits there like a retired sheriff. He looks like Wyatt Earp.

And you know something? Now that I can see his actual hair, this was wrong on three levels. It was bad about gender. It was bad about race. And Imus should never be judging anybody in the follicular manner, because he's sitting there with that Elsa Lancaster mullet of his, talking about other people's hair, and it's just wrong.

Now I don't think he should be fired...

O'REILLY: Who on earth knows who Elsa Lancaster is, Miller? Who?

MILLER: I'm building — I'm building one of these in for you each week so you can — you can do the clip thing.

O'REILLY: What did we have last week, Greer Garson or somebody? I mean, come on.

All right. Now the last question. We had Al Sharpton here. Now, do you think that Sharpton and Jackson are exploiting this for their own purposes?

MILLER: Yes. I mean this is their business. You can see the — the Arthur Murray footprints on the floor now. He has to — Imus has to go supine himself. This must be, as Dorothy Parker said, a fresh hell for him, that he has to kiss the ring of Al Sharpton, who he knows better than anybody, is a complete sham.

That's the weird rush that is happening here, is that Imus is smart enough to know how he's going to have to supplicate to get back in to make the money he makes. And it's going to eat him up. Nothing that this culture could do to Don Imus is going to be rougher on him than he's going to be on himself.

O'REILLY: Well, I think it's a little karma thing coming there. But I have to disagree. I think that Sharpton had a very, very well thought out argument, at least on this program, about the — how the comment affects people, not white guys but black women in that kind of a situation.

MILLER: Sure he did, Bill. But Al Sharpton's a sham. Come on. This should have been Barack Obama who said that. He missed the real Mr. Soldier moment here.

O'REILLY: I'm not so sure about Barack Obama. I don't know if Barack Obama, you know, is engaged. Because you can't get close to him. The only person that can talk to him is Larry King and David Letterman. And they ain't working him over. You know what I'm talking about, Miller?

MILLER: Exactly. He has the acumen to step in with a guy like you and hold his own, or at least present his side.

O'REILLY: Or present an argument about what happened here, because this is important to African-Americans.

All right. Let's get on to something that is more serious than the Imus thing. And that's these Duke kids and their families, who are literally gone through hell, emotionally and financially, with this villain Nifong. How do you see this?

MILLER: Well, listen, as it turns out, after 395 days we find out that this woman was like the Louvre of DNA. This is Barry Scheck's idea of a Six Flag amusement park. And Nifong rolled this out like he had solid, credible evidence.

And guess what? If I was the parents of any one of those three kids, I would spend the rest of my life haunting that guy. I would flatten him to the point where Nifong went into the vernacular as a verb meaning what happens if your parachute doesn't open after you sky dive. I would just go after him relentlessly.

Forget about disbarred. I would try to see him behind bars.

O'REILLY: So you'd sue him and what else would you do? Because...

MILLER: I'd go after the woman. Listen, you just — this woman has a track record on this sort of stuff. I mean, I think this is the third time...

O'REILLY: Malicious prosecution, and then you go after the woman as a fraudulent participant in this?

MILLER: Yes. I think — I think this is an important moment to remember that there, you know, has got to be a shield law on the other side, too. These three kids, whether they like it or not — and obviously they've been proved about as innocent as you can be proved. Their names are still attached with this in some weird subliminal way for the rest of their life. You hear them speak today, and you think, "Wow, what..."

O'REILLY: Can you imagine the life savings wiped out in these families, having to hire these lawyers? I mean, one — because one of the guys' lives in my neighborhood, and I know the devastation personally.

MILLER: I didn't know that.

O'REILLY: What would you do with the 88 Duke professors who signed this insane letter that didn't convict the kids but basically said, you know, they're scum? What would you do with them?

MILLER: Well, you can't do anything, can you, because they're tenured. Listen, if they can't do anything with a moron like Ward Churchill, if that guy is still out there teaching and Colorado can't get rid of him, what are you going to do with these guys?

Listen, it's the last bastion of aging hippies. It's the one place where they can still feel, you know, like they're at a, you know, Weather Underground speech with a loudspeaker or something. It's sad.

But the simple fact is that is the place where most aging guys go who still have that leftist agenda, is college campuses.

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